Maybe I am.
When something bad happens to people, they can’t help asking: Why me? I always feel there is a tiny bit of hidden narcissism behind that question. Because why not me? It’s easy to secretly believe that fate has read our résumé, as if fate knows me, knows that I’m cute, pretty, smart, that I love reading, and that I haven’t done too many terrible things, so when it’s time to draw a name, it might just skip mine (if only it really worked that way!).
Every day, tragedies and terrible things happen in this world. Someone is sitting in a hospital hallway waiting for news that isn’t going to be good. Someone leaves home in the morning still thinking about what to have for dinner, and then there is no dinner. Why should other people get caught in the rain while I somehow deserve to stay dry under the roof?
I’m not so crazy that if lightning strikes me, I’m going to stand there praising how beautiful it is. Of course I still hope I’ll be lucky. I have so, so many greedy little wishes. I want the people I love to live for a very long time and stay healthy. I want every plane to land safely. I want the cells in my body to behave themselves for decades.
But if I want all those bad things to stay away from me and the people I love, then they can only happen to someone else. And why should it be them?
Sometimes rain falls simply because the clouds happened to come this way. When it’s sunny, I’ll go outside and sit in the sun. When it rains, I’ll get wet. As for what the weather will be tomorrow, I don’t know. The universe never promised me a lifetime of sunny days. But today, it isn’t raining too hard.
Maybe that’s enough?